A Series of One Shots
by Epikoinos
Summary: Here I post my chapters for the prompts from The Ultimate One Shot Challenge forum. I plan for them to be compatible but they might end up contradicting each other.


Hannah Longbottom was buying flowers. Not cut flowers – Neville hated those – but still _flowers_; the purpose was beauty and not potion ingredients.

"Maybe a colour changing dahlia," suggested the florist. She was a statuesque black witch named Asha Applegate, who Hannah had come to know quite well through the years.

"I don't know… I was thinking maybe yellow," Hannah responded with her nose in a bouquet of roses.

"Oh! Then you should check out our new Shrinkable Sunflowers. They've been magibred to survive unlimited size changes without wilting. Perfect to have in a pot in the winter and out in the garden in the summer!"

Hannah felt her face muscles contract at the mention of a garden, and Ms Applegate noticed the wince.

"Ah, did I hit a sore spot?" she asked with a sympathetic smile. "Been fighting about gardens?"

When Hannah bought flowers it usually meant that she'd been fighting with Neville, and after eight years Ms Applegate knew this well. It had begun with their very first fight. That was back when Tom was still landlord of the Leaky Cauldron, and Hannah lived in a miniature room on the first floor. Neville had stayed the night, and when she woke up he was still there, even though he had promised that he'd be gone. He persisted in being in her way until she screamed at him that "If you won't let me do my job, then you can do it yourself!" and left to walk up and down Diagon Alley until she wasn't angry anymore. Then she waited outside a flower shop until it opened, having decided that giving Neville a plant would be the perfect apology.

"Yeah," answered Hannah. "Neville is leaving the Aurors to teach at Hogwarts. And you know, that's quite a change already, and then out of the blue he says he wants to sell his house. He said that he can't afford to keep it on a lower salary, and that we live here all the time anyways. And then I said 'But what about the garden?', and the knobwanded flobberworm says 'Well, there are loads of gardens at Hogwarts.'"

"Oh no," interjected Ms Applegate.

"Yeah! Like _he's _the only one who cares about that garden! Who does all the de-gnoming when he's off on duty? Me! I _need_ some place to get away to – I can't live my whole life in the middle of London."

Ms Applegate handed her a dancing mimosa to smell until she calmed down.

"Couldn't you get a summer cottage or something? Something cheaper that still has a garden?" she suggested.

"Oh." Hannah couldn't think of anything else to say. It was an obvious suggestion. Why did they always have to fight about such ridiculous little things?

She knew, of course, that other couples had their rough patches too. Ronald and Hermione constantly made little jabs at each other, and the actual intent – hurtful or loving – was impossible for an outsider to gauge. Katie and Susan still broke up every third month. Harry and Ginny had passionate but infrequent screaming contests. Ernie and Marie radiated increasingly more passive-aggressive bitterness for several weeks and then they had a calm discussion and everything was nice and dandy again. Dean and Seamus stopped talking to each other for days and then picked right up like nothing had happened. Rolf and Luna made compromises that neither of them was happy with and lived with them until the hard feelings were forgotten.

But knowing that everyone fought didn't make Hannah feel any better about her and Neville's fights. Fighting with Neville always brought out the side of herself that she liked the least. Hannah had been a shouter since she was a child – she and her dad had had countless screaming matches through the years – but Neville always kept his calm through their fights. Hannah hated it. She took pride in being calm and down to earth, and Neville "outcalming" her provoked her to no end. He tried to reason with her and she ranted and raved until she ran out of things to shout. Then she spluttered wordlessly for a few seconds, red as a beet, and then promptly turned on her heels and ran out.

And off to _Applegate's Blissful Blossoms_. Buying flowers had become a sort of cleansing ritual for Hannah. Now, when she was carrying her new pot back home through Diagon Alley, she felt calm and serene. She felt like her regular self. Neville was waiting for her by the door to the Leaky Cauldron. Hannah held the flower pot behind her back as she approached. He greeted her with a smile and said "Do you have anything to say before we make up?"

"No," she answered. "Well… there is one thing, actually. When we get ourselves a summer house, we should bring these Shrinkable Sunflowers there and unshrink them."


End file.
